


It's Like You Never Had Wings (The Kafkaesque Remix)

by waketosleep



Category: White Collar
Genre: Bodyswap, Gender Issues, Identity Issues, Literary References & Allusions, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal and Elizabeth switch bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Like You Never Had Wings (The Kafkaesque Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hoosierbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Metamorphosis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312861) by [hoosierbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch). 



> Title is from a Deftones song. Yeah, that one. Also, nobody in this story is Gregor Samsa, thank god.

She still isn't entirely sure how it happened.

It was reasonably simple to piece together the timeline of events--she's run through it for herself, step by step, so many times it's turned into some kind of mental talisman--but there was a point, apparently at the crucial moment, where she blacked out.

She and Neal were waiting for Peter to finish a (frankly, very tedious) conversation with Ritchie from Records. Neal sauntered out the door of the office and down the hall. She sauntered out after him, because when he moved that casually, he was getting into something he shouldn't. She followed him around a corner and found him fiddling with a blank door. He looked up at her, opened the door, slipped something back in his pocket (a credit card?) and waved at her to follow him. The room was a dusty evidence storage area; shelves full of musty file boxes, stacked paintings in knobby frames with the paper wrappings tearing off them, other expensive-looking knick-knacks. The light was actually a bulb on a string overhead, and when Neal clicked it on, her eyes tracked over everything around them slowly.

"Did you know this was here?" she asked.

His arm was around her waist in the crowded space. "I explore sometimes. That shelf is all forged bonds."

She squinted at a painting as he slid past her to look at a vase on a different shelf. "Is that a Vermeer?" She asked, pointing.

He glanced over his shoulder, the vase in his hands. "That's a reproduction," he said after barely a look. "I think this is real Qing, though."

They backed up at the same time in a too-small space, and the collision of their shoulders produced the sound of four hundred-year-old pottery hitting the edge of a shelf and then the floor.

"Shit," was the last thing she remembered before the blackout.

The first thing afterwards was Peter and Ritchie's voices from the hallway, asking what the hell they were doing in the evidence storage and if they were okay.

She and Neal locked gazes in absolute horror.

"We're fine," Neal shouted, going for the door. "Need a broom, though."

"What did Neal break?" Peter asked as they tumbled back out into the corridor, and then he looked between them. "Is something wrong?"

Elizabeth shot one look at Ritchie, trying to see over their shoulders into the doorway, and answered, "Absolutely nothing. We're fine, Peter."

It was profoundly unsettling to hear Neal's voice coming out of her mouth. Not as unsettling as walking down the hall to the elevator on his too-long legs, though, while watching him move very cautiously in her Louboutins. He looked like he was about to topple over, so Elizabeth reached out to take her own arm and watched her own face smile gratefully back at her for the support.

***

Peter took the news pretty well, all things considered.

"You broke a piece of cursed Chinese pottery in Evidence and it made you switch bodies," he summarized very slowly. There was a long, thoughtful silence as they stood around the living room. "April Fool's was a month ago, you know."

Elizabeth was still thinking of the best response to that when Neal suddenly wobbled violently and hissed, "Jesus Christ, I have to get these shoes off before I die. How do you do this all the time?" he bitched, walking on baby-deer legs to lean on the arm of the couch and pry her heels off with his toes. They were slingbacks, so it took some effort. Neal sighed loudly and curled his pedicured, stocking-covered toes into the hardwood with a look of evident bliss before standing up and picking up the shoes.

Peter watched the whole thing in a state of bemusement.

"Takes practice," Elizabeth said, biting the inside of her lip at the scene.

"El," said Peter.

"Yes?" she said.

He looked between them, at Neal digging around the hall closet and completely ignoring them, and then at Elizabeth, who stood before him with her muscular arms crossed over her chest, suit jacket pulling a little tighter at the shoulders and tie snug around her neck. Then he faced her. "What did you eat on our first date?" he asked, sizing her up.

"Your manicotti," she said. "The fettuccine thing I ordered had anchovies in it."

"You don't like anchovies?" Neal asked from inside the closet. There was some thumping before he emerged with a triumphant look. "I was starting to think you only owned four-inch heels."

She looked at the pair of dusty flats in his hands. "I used to wear those home from the bar," she remembered. "They're comfy," she added encouragingly.

Peter sat down abruptly on the couch. It was possible his legs had given out.

"You broke a piece of cursed Chinese pottery and it made you switch bodies," he said faintly.

***

The alarm clock is going off insistently; Elizabeth wakes up sandwiched between two warm bodies and doesn't want to move.

Peter mutters and rolls over, hitting the alarm clock until it shuts up. She smiles to herself and decides to be a grown-up and get her ass out of bed. She rolls over Peter to escape, at which he mutters some more and slides a hand across her back. Neal rolls into the warm spot she leaves behind without any appearance of waking up.

She pads naked into the bathroom, the dog looking up from his spot near the door as she passes. The shower hisses as she turns it on and the pipes rattle a little.

Should she shave or can she put it off some more? It's a question for the ages.

She sighs and grabs a fresh razor as the shower starts to steam up the bathroom.

***

There were a lot of questions that sprang up immediately.

How long would it last?

Who had to wear the ankle monitor?

What did it feel like to be inside the wrong body?

Who was going to go to work where?

Would it resolve on its own at some point or would they have to try to fix it somehow?

Should they tell anybody?

Would anyone believe them?

No, really, how long would it last?

Gluing the vase back together was the first thing they tried, after a good night's sleep didn't fix it (Elizabeth somehow knew sleep would do nothing, but Peter insisted that they should try it, so they did). Neal took the lead on the vase-repair, since he was the only one who knew what a Qing vase should look like in one piece. Three hours later, when he was done, they all stood around staring at it in silence.

"What if we tried breaking it again?" Elizabeth asked eventually.

"No!" Neal almost shouted.

Peter put out his hands to stifle any argument before it could get going. "We'll try something else."

She sighed, rubbing a disconcertingly bushy eyebrow. "Well, in the meantime, at least Neal has flats to wear and I'm still enjoying the novelty of peeing standing up."

Neal looked pained at that.

***

Life kept stubbornly carrying on around them; Elizabeth started having to go to work with Peter and consult on cases to keep from violating the terms of Neal's release, and while a few days of sick time from her own job didn't rock the boat too badly (as long as she didn't think too hard about the work piling up), the fact remained that she had picked up a contract for a gallery opening literally the day before the body-switch and things needed to be done.

"Why can't Yvonne do this, El?" Peter asked as they got ready for work. "I thought you had her riding along on this kind of thing already."

Elizabeth fiddled with her cufflinks. "This guy is high-maintenance and only wants to deal with me. Anyway, Yvonne's plenty busy picking up the slack already, this week." She turned to Neal, who was almost ready to go. He'd gotten almost as good at putting a bra on as he was at taking them off. "Not those earrings," she said. "For work, these ones."

Neal shrugged and changed jewelry accordingly, frowning as he tried to get the earring hook through the hole in his lobe. His makeup was flawless, she noted with a combination of approval and disgust. Then again, a man who knocked off master painters professionally should be able to handle eyeliner. "You seem nervous, Elizabeth," he said once he had his earrings sorted out. He met her eyes in the mirror. "You never seem nervous about clients."

"I'm normally in the right body when I meet them," she countered.

Peter sighed and left the room.

She watched him leave and then admitted, "This client is kind of an overbearing asshole. I haven't had any conversations with him yet that have gone particularly well."

"But he hired you."

"My rates are competitive."

"And your taste is impeccable. It's going to be fine. Come on," he said, taking a light grip on her elbow and steering her toward the stairs.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she said at the front door. "I should make you call and cancel. Reschedule. Tell him Yvonne has to meet him because I have a deadly strain of flu."

Neal's tiny, manicured hand on her back wasn't really strong enough to make her go anywhere she didn't feel like going, but he herded her out the door all the same. "It's going to be fine. If I can con people out of their money and valuables, I can make this guy think I'm you while you whisper instructions in my ear. Let's go," he said firmly.

***

The gallery owner was definitely still an overbearing asshole when Neal walked in, with Elizabeth trailing in his wake and using the opportunity to take in the space. Neal faked his way through pleasantries and made it through five minutes talking about the event details by going off of Elizabeth's faint cues, and then his (her) phone started ringing.

He pulled it out of his bag. "Sorry," he said, "I have to take this. Neal here will pick up where I left off, if that's okay with you?"

He waited just long enough for the gallery owner to flick a glance over at Elizabeth before turning his back and leaving, phone at his ear.

She wondered who was on the other end. Peter. Nobody. She did have that fake call app. The gallery owner was looking up at her expectantly, and she blinked down at him.

"Right," she said. "Theme. Do we have one in mind?"

She realized, five minutes later, that the client was being much less of an asshole than he had been in the past. Or even when talking with Neal, just now, who'd been suave as ever but trapped in a female body. It made her angry for a moment--incandescently angry--but then she swallowed that down and decided to enjoy looking imposing and commanding respect, just for a little while.

***

She's dressed and murmuring sweet nothings into her coffee when Peter and Neal come downstairs. Peter kisses her absently on the crown of her head and Neal winks, running a tired hand through his hair as he goes for the fridge.

They're closer than they used to be. Quieter, more domestic. They keep to themselves. She and Peter didn't have a wild lifestyle in the first place, although Neal had initially added a livelier dynamic. But they've changed, collectively, tightened their ranks.

She likes it.

"Anything exciting happening at work today, honey?" she asks, running a hand down Peter's arm.

"Bad guys to catch." He slurps his coffee. "Speaking of which, you two behave."

He says that almost every day, probably because it still makes her smile.

***

It took about a month for her to have a breakdown over it.

"I don't understand why we can't just _change back_!" she shouted, dropping her knife and fork with a clatter that made the dog whine.

Peter and Neal shot her startled looks across the table and then looked at each other, having some kind of silent conversation.

"El," said Peter carefully.

"No," she snapped. "I've started answering to 'Neal' now. I just do it automatically! And I wear three-piece suits instead of my nice dresses, and I miss my Jimmy Choos and they don't make them in a men's size twelve, and I'm sure they'd look like shit with this fucking ankle monitor I have to wear anyway!"

She was pacing, she realized. She didn't remember getting up from the table, but she was pacing back and forth across the rug and Satchmo was thumping his tail sadly from under the dining room table.

"El," Peter tried again. He licked his lips. "Do you--"

"Every inch of me feels wrong," she said. "I had a life. I _liked it_ , it was mine. I want it _back_."

Neal was the one who got up. She watched her own body move around the chair and approach her like she was a scared animal. Barefoot, because while he'd started wearing her heels, he took them off when he got home. "Elizabeth," he said in her voice.

"I think I'm going to cry," she rasped. "Or puke."

"Okay," said Neal, and he pulled her down into a tight hug.

She clutched him like a lifeline.

"Wow, I smell great," he said into her shoulder after a minute, and she made a noise that might have been a laugh or a sob.

"How do you handle this so well?" she murmured.

"I have no idea," he said, and it sounded like it was mostly the truth.

Peter joined the hug. "I'm not going to pretend I get it," he said. "But I'm here."

She actually did start crying at that point.

They all ended up on the couch, dinner sitting abandoned and cold over on the table.

"Maybe I can convince the Bureau to get Neal released with time served," Peter said eventually.

"And then what?" she asked.

"Event planning?" said Peter.

"Great, I can go work for myself at a company I started."

"You can buy yourself out, too," he said.

"Or you could do something entirely different," Neal piped up, rubbing her shoulder lightly.

"Start over, again?"

"You can do whatever you want," Peter agreed.

"With Neal's criminal record," she deadpanned.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"And my stunning record of cooperation as a top consultant for the FBI," he added, pressing his lips into her shoulder.

She stirred. "You're going to get lipstick on this shirt."

He raised his head, wrinkling his nose, and wiped at it a few times before shrugging and nuzzling his cheek there instead.

She leaned into Peter while Neal leaned into her, and she frowned at the coffee table.

"I'm going to go take up a life of crime," she said suddenly. "You two have fun."

"No!" said Peter, at the same time Neal said, "Yes!"

Peter managed to haul her back onto the couch and glare at Neal at the same time.

"I mean," said Neal. He cleared his throat and looked at her earnestly. "No. That is a terrible plan. Even though you'd make a great thief."

She glanced over at Peter, who looked like he was getting a headache. "You want to come, Neal?" she asked.

"We can't leave Peter all alone. But you have to take Mozzie with you."

"Never mind," she said, settling back into Peter's side. Absently, she loosened her tie, and then she took it off entirely and threw it at the armchair. "When did we start talking like this is permanent?" she asked nobody in particular.

Satchmo clicked his way across the floor and lay down on her feet. It was the only response she got.

***

Peter tops up her coffee before sitting beside her at the breakfast bar and stealing a piece of toast. "What about you guys?" he asks through a mouthful of crumbs. "Anything exciting?"

She puts down her coffee mug. "I have two meetings about the gala in April and another one about some new Kandinskys that are apparently being added to our collection." She rubs her temple, because just talking about it is already giving her a headache. The curators are high-maintenance. "And then I have a meeting tonight after work," she remembers. "You guys are on your own for dinner."

"I'll make dinner," offers Peter.

"No, you won't," Neal says immediately. "We'll get delivery before I let you near the stove again."

"Are you listening to this character assassination?" Peter asks her in mock outrage. "I used to cook all the time when El and I were first married," he informs Neal. "She found it sexy."

Neal shoots her a look.

"I'm Switzerland," she insists, standing up from the breakfast bar. "And I have to go to work, now."

She stands dutifully for her goodbye kisses and then goes for her coat. "Enjoy your meeting," says Neal when she's standing at the front door, fiddling with her keys. "The after-work one."

She glances up at him, poking his head around the corner at her.

"You could come," she offers. "If you wanted."

He wrinkles his nose in thought. He seems to have picked that up from her, maybe. "Thank you. Really. But I'm good," he says after a moment.

They study each other. "You really are, aren't you," she realizes.

He just shrugs, then shoots her a parting smile and disappears back into the kitchen. As she opens the door, she hears him telling Peter about his newest client--someone he once stole a Kandinsky from, talk about coincidences.

There's a tiny smile on her own face when the door shuts again behind her.

***

It took about a year to admit to herself that she couldn't unbreak a vase.

She was doing the dishes when the thought crept in. Her tie was flung over a shoulder and Peter and Neal were in the living room, talking about a case. She stopped scrubbing, stared at the backsplash behind the sink, and let the pot sink into the dishwater while she stared at her hands. They were delicate, nimble hands, for a man, but they were big, and had blunted nails and hair around the knuckles. Her wrist bones jutted sharply and dark hair went up her forearms to her rolled shirtsleeves. She could see the top of the fridge from where she stood--it was dusty--and her dick hung between her legs inside her tailored trousers and she felt a bone-deep revulsion for all of it.

She'd liked this body fine when Neal had lived in it.

But it was hers, now, and she didn't want it. It didn't look right.

Maybe some renovations were going to have to happen, she realized.

Maybe it was time to take Neal Caffrey's name off the lease for good.

She walked into the living room, suds still clinging unnoticed to the backs of her hands, and announced, "I heard the Guggenheim is looking for people. I'm going to apply."

They broke off their conversation and blinked at her.

"The Guggenheim would be good," agreed Peter after a moment.

"What about Burke Premiere Events?" Neal asked. "You've been doing so much there."

"Keep it, you're getting good at it. Or sell it to Yvonne," she said, and went back to the kitchen.

She was going to buy some damn jeans. Neal's-- _her_ wardrobe was too tailored. She felt dirty every time she ate pizza on the couch in these clothes.

***

She gets off the 4 train and walks past Union Square Park, stopping for a quick bite to go on her four-block journey from the station. She flicks a glance up at the rainbow flags overhead before she pushes open the big glass door of the community centre, and smiles and waves at the receptionist before continuing down the hall to one of the group rooms. She can hear a cacophony of voices before she makes it inside, and tries to pick out the ones she knows.

"Neal!" calls a husky voice to her left.

"Crystal," she smiles, and gives her a hug.

"I love this scarf," Crystal announces, letting it trail through her fingers as she pulls away.

"Thank you. I love your gels," Elizabeth returns, gesturing at Crystal's nails. She obligingly displays them a little better, and they shine green in the lights.

"Thanks! They're fake as hell, but they wear like iron. I can't seem to grow mine," Crystal confides.

Elizabeth thinks of her polish collection. Neal doesn't really use it. "I keep wondering if I should start doing mine," she says, thinking on it.

"Definitely!" says Crystal. "It's tough to be neat at first, though. If you haven't done them."

Elizabeth ponders how to respond to that. "I used to do my sister's all the time," she says finally. It's true.

"Feel free to share your skills then, honey," says Crystal with a wink, before glancing over Elizabeth's shoulder. "Janet and Doug are ready to start, I think. Hey, are you finally going to stick around for Imperial Court one of these days? It's right after group. And you should, you'd love it."

Elizabeth tries to picture wearing a dress and makeup outside the privacy of her own home again, and her lips twitch. "Maybe next week," she concedes. "Today was a long day at work."

"Bring your husband and wife, too. Make a night of it."

"I said maybe!"

Crystal winks again and they go find chairs.

***

She almost walked into the counter when she caught sight of Neal's finger, bare, with just a pale band where the rings used to be.

"Why did you take them off?" she asked.

"Take what off?" he said, although he betrayed himself by clutching at his ring finger, rubbing the pale spot.

She raised her eyebrows.

"It didn't feel right to wear them," he said finally.

"Why wouldn't it?"

He hesitated. "They're yours. Not mine."

She looked at his hand. "They don't fit me."

They studied each other in silence.

"It's your decision," she said slowly. "But my two cents is that you should keep wearing them. They're yours to do whatever you want with, Neal."

He smiled ruefully. "Peter's getting you a new one. I wasn't supposed to tell."

She grinned and kissed him. He smiled into it.

"Those jeans look damn good, by the way," he said when they broke apart.

"Thank you. Sometimes change is good."

"I didn't mean to take over your life, you know," he said suddenly, grabbing her wrist.

She released his hand and held it for a second. "My life is my life," she said, happy to share her epiphany. "You've got my body but the rest of me is what it always was."

He smiled a little more brightly. "I'm still sorry about the criminal record."

"You're not that sorry."

"Okay. Maybe not. It was fun, sometimes. Oh, hey."

Elizabeth looked at him expectantly.

"You know, that fucking vase is still in Evidence."

"Really," she said.

"Really. You think for a hundred bucks, Ritchie from Records would let us go in there with a hammer?"

***

Two days later, Neal came home with a new, much shorter haircut. Peter clearly didn't know what to say.

Elizabeth did. "Suits you," she said.

"Credit where it's due," said Neal.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This went in kind of a different direction than the original fic did. Sorry about that.


End file.
